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July 20, 2006

Operation "CGM-1"

The King "... should divide the day as well as the night into eight parts . . . During the fifth, he should hold consultations with the council of ministers through correspondence and also keep himself informed of the secret reports brought by spies.... During the first one-eighth part of the night, he should meet the officers of the secret service.... During the seventh, he should hold consultations and send out the officers of the secret service for their operations." The Duties of a King , The Arthasastra , Kautilya - Prime Minister to Emperor Chandragupta Maurya (4th Century BCE) !!

So began one of the most sophisticated operations carried out by a Counter intelligence Task Force in Indian. Code named : "CGM-1"

7/11 was a bleak day once again for the those in India. The Mumbai blast occurred. This triggered a massive outcry in the international community. Last Tuesday's attacks in Mumbai killed 182 people and wounded more than 700

7/18 - the Indian ban applies to ALL blogs from these sites, not just those originating in India: ALL blogspot, typepad, geocities blogs worldwide. Thus Indian community is "eyes-wide shut" status. They can talk , but yet they can't see. - Likewise the intel community can now target. Infiltration and communication between the "dissident group" is blocked.

7/19- "having seen the government order. Only two webblogs – pyjamaeditors.blogspot.com and exposingtheleft.blogspot.com have been been blocked," Gulshan Rai, head of cyber security agency Computer Emergency Response Team.

7/19 - "Shivam Vij managed to talk to Dr Gulshan Rai, director of CERT-IN, the only body authorized to issue directives to ISPs. His response: "Somebody must have asked for some sites to be blocked. What is your problem?" . Here's the list of site actually blocked

7/20 - Early AM (EDT) - India calls blog block an "error". The secretary for telecommunications, D.S. Mathur, the highest-ranking civil servant in the sector, hung up the phone when reached at home. 40,128 Indian bloggers who mention India as their country are effected.

7/20 - Press Information Bureau releases a statement "The Department of Telecom (DoT) has instructed all the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country to block only the specified website/webpages on the parent website"

Gulsan Rai once worked with the the inter-services Joint Cipher Bureau which has primary responsibility for cryptology and SIGINT, providing coordination and direction to the other military service organisations with similar mission. Most current equipment providing tactical intelligence is of Russian origin, including specialized direction finding and monitoring equipment.

Of the list of 17 'banned' sites, four are dead, one is Chinese, six are American right wing, two (perhaps) wrongly spelled, three Hinduata sites and one some guy called Rahul Yadav.

When contacted Yadav tells me "When I found out about this it was pretty shocking, how can a government focus their time and efforts on a personal website with only links to its political opponents? "

Do you seriously think that DoT and the CERT-In, would ask ISPs in the country to ban imagesearchyahoo.com, that's not even a URL !!

It was just a brilliant smoke screen, written, directed, produced and enacted by the ever talent men and women of Indian security agencies. We might never know what happened during the last 48 hours. What was really blocked, who was caught, what was prevented.

Was Operation CGM-1 a direct response, to what is called as the; Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council's 2020 Project is the third unclassified report prepared by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in recent years that takes a long-term view of the future.